MOSCOW, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Former Spartak Moscow captain Fyodor Cherenkov was in hospital after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, a Moscow hospital spokeswoman said on Monday.
'Cherenkov was badly poisoned by taking too many sleeping pills and after detoxification regained consciousness and is now recovering,' a spokeswoman for the Sklifosovsky hospital said by telephone.
Alexander Shikunov, Spartak's technical director, said that Cherenkov, 42, had been given the wrong pills by his relatives and they had had a bad effect on him.
But Komsomolskaya Pravda daily quoted doctors who revived Cherenkov as saying when he regained conciousness: '...pessimism overcame me. The circumstances came together into one point and I decided to solve all my problems in one go.'
A gifted playmaker, Cherenkov played played 494 matches for Spartak between 1978 and 1993, scoring 95 goals.
He coached Spartak reserve team for a few years before quitting the job last year. It has been widely reported in the Russian media that during most of his career and since then
Cherenkov had mental problems.
- NEWS